Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.

Languages Represented:
English

Information for Researchers

Access

Collection is open for use.

Publication Rights

Copyright has been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must
be submitted in writing to the Head of the Manuscripts Division. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft
Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which
must also be obtained by the reader.

Some printed materials have been transferred to the book collection of The Bancroft Library.

Photographs have been transferred to Pictorial Collections of The Bancroft Library.

Administrative Information

Acquisition Information

The W. T. Reid Papers were given to The Bancroft Library in July 1980 by Christine L. Reid. Additions were made on December 12, 1990 and in February 1991 by the estate of Christine L. Reid, via Thomas R. Stetson.

Scope and Content

William Thomas Reid was born on November 8, 1843 on a farm near Jacksonville, Illinois. After graduating from Harvard in 1868, he taught at the Newport, Rhode Island High School and the prestigious Boston Latin School before accepting a job at the Boys' High School in San Francisco, California in 1875. Elected to the presidency of the University of California in 1881, Reid served until 1885, when he retired to found the Belmont School in Belmont, California on August 5, 1885. In May 1893, Hopkins Academy merged with the Belmont School and the two schools were incorporated as
Belmont School, W. T. Reid Foundation. In April 1900, the control and ownership again reverted to Mr. Reid who ran the school until August 1918, when it was sold
to the Most Rev. Edward J. Hanna, D.D., Archbishop of San Francisco.

The collection consists primarily of materials related to the Belmont School, including administrative, teacher, student,
and business files with some financial records. The student files include some report cards, applications, recommendations
from other schools, and correspondence between Mr. Reid and parents, as well as correspondence between other teachers and
parents and students. The letters provide an in-depth look at the process of receiving an education at a private boys school
in California from the turn of the century through World War I. More personal papers of the immediate Reid family—William
T. Reid, Julia Reid, and William T. Reid, Jr.—are also included and also often relate to Belmont. Julia Reid's Papers, for instance, include a series of correspondence
from Chinese and Japanese workers at Belmont asking or thanking her for various types of help in relation to employment. William
Reid's personal papers include speeches, addresses, and talks given at Belmont, Stanford, and the University of California
on teaching and sports, especially concerning football in which he starred while at Harvard.